8.5

If you have been an avid fan of the original PlayStation games and you are anything like me, I bet you’d say that Metal Gear Solid is one of your favorite games in the original PlayStation. In all likelihood, the Solid Snake’s relationships, the movie-like presentation and the freaky and skilled enemies of the game have probably blown you off, too. It’s indeed a very great structured game that make fans look out for more.

Konami and developer Kojami Productions is releasing Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker on PSP a month from now. It’s the newest game in the Metal Gear Solid franchise. The game on PSP picks up from where Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater and Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops ended. The character you are playing is Naked Snake (the Big Boss) and you have just built a Militaires Sans Frontieres which is a group of perverse soldiers who are fighting battles for countries who couldn’t fight for themselves. A little while into the game, a professor and a girl show up in front of your doorstep and they ask you to help them stop a CIA invasion in Costa Rica. After that, it’s all up to the cardboard boxes and CQC that fans have known and loved.

Since the original and throughout all Metal Gear games the prominence of Solid has remained really quite insane. With the presence of patriots, virtual reality and a whole lot more, it’s definitely a hard thing to do to follow and keep intact a simple story in place. Out of all the Metal Gear games, Peace Walker is equipped with the most comprehensible story. It goes with Snake knowing what the Boss is about to do, then the professor asking for help to remove the bad guys out of his town – the story just goes on and on and on. It’s probable that you’d only take in at least half of what the story comprises, but as characters are being added and the mission develops, Peace Walker is able to keep up with the pace and also its plotline. You won’t feel as lost anymore when the cutscenes become awesomely dramatic.

When under a mission, you can definitely say that this game stays true to its Metal Gear nature. You can carefully move the analog core in a direction to let Snake move that way. When you get at the back of an unwitting guard, you can hold the right shoulder button to take hold of him and then make him become your hostage or toss him to the ground. There’s still the presence of exclamation points, alert phrases, and radio calls that you loved in previous presentations and probably expected from this franchise.

This game’s story is furnished with amazing cutscenes and great voice work. Like what we’ve already seen before, the cutscenes are done through animated comic style. This is where an image holds still in a freeze-frame while actions and reactions get animated. It is just so brilliantly awesome, dude!

The game is definitely equipped with the right amount of action and your expectations, rooting from all the predecessors of Peace Walker, are definitely put to the test. Though it’s still a month away, you may want to hold on to your seat now; but you have to be on the alert, because if you’re not quick enough you might lose your copy of Metal Gear Solid’s newest game as everybody’s all geared up to grab their copy as well.